7 Times Indians Took Offense to the Silliest of Things

We Indians are a sensitive bunch. A remark by Snapchat’s CEO made us so blind we misdirected our anger to desi Snapdeal. We were so angry at Sonu Nigam we started targeting Sonu Sood. Now, it’s Katy Perry’s turn to face our wrath. The pop star recently shared an image of Goddess Kali on Instagram and Indians went nuts and demanded she apologise and take the post down. Why? Maybe because she’s a white American. We bring to you six more times Indians have been enraged over the pettiest things

1. Amazon and the Kerala State Transport Bus

Amazon had put up a hoarding which depicted a few men pushing a bus and captioned it with the words ‘We Indians love to help’. It looked like your typical feel-good billboard but eagle-eyed Mallus spotted something wrong. The bus in question was Kerala State Transport Bus and this made Keralites very angry indeed. They took offence to the fact that a bus from Kerala was shown in a broken-down condition and took to social media to vent their anger. Amazon took down the hoarding and apologised.

2. Snapchat CEO’s ‘Poor’ Remarks

Image: Wikipedia/cellanr – Flickr

An ex employee had claimed that Evan Spiegel, Spapchat CEO, had said that he did not want to expand into India and China because they were poor countries. Indians vented their anger on social media once again and got the hashtag #boycottSnapchat trending. Some were so blinded and misguided in their attempt to defend their country’s honour, they even started giving poor ratings and uninstalling the similar-sounding Snapdeal. Spiegel went on record to deny these allegations but shares of Snapchat have already fallen due to these alleged comments.

Katy Perry posted a picture of Goddess Kali on her Instagram account and captioned it ‘current mood’. That was enough to get Indians riled up and attacking her for no reason. They accused her of disrespecting Hinduism, using the image as a meme, calling her an illiterate, used colourful language, and announced they would unfollow her. We wonder if they will stop singing ‘Firework’ too.

4. Piers Morgan and India’s Performance at the Rio Olympics

Image: Twitter

Piers Morgan loves picking up fights with people on Twitter. This time, he criticised India’s poor performance at the 2016 Rio Olympics

1,200,000,000 people and not a single Gold medal at the Olympics? Come on India, this is shameful. Put the bunting away & get training.

Indian Twitterati reopened their own wounds to attack Piers Morgan for his remarks about India’s performance at the Olympics in December 2016. Piers who must now know better than to take panga with the millions of Indian patriots on Twitter laughed it off.

Indians were fawning over Chris Martin when he came to Mumbai for the Global Citizen concert in November 2016, but just a few months earlier, they had accused the band of perpetuating Indian stereotypes in their ‘Hymn for the Weekend’ video which was partially shot in Mumbai.

South Asia is only seen as desirable when we can be used as sad-looking, dark-skinned props that throw colorful powder everywhere @coldplay

They also didn’t like Beyonce wearing mehendi and Sonam Kapoor being given so little screen time. Seriously guys.

6. Maria Sharapova Didn’t Know Who Sachin Was

Image: Twitter

Although, the International Cricket Council (ICC) recognizes more than 125 countries that play cricket, there are very few nations in the world that actively follow the sport. Sachin is a God in India–to a country that doesn’t play cricket, it is quite possible that he isn’t a household name. Maria Sharapova said at a press conference that she did not know who Sachin Tendulkar was and faced the wrath of Indian cricket fans.

In 2007, Hollywood star Richard Gere had come to Jaipur for an AIDS event and he thought he might as well put on a show. He got down on his knees and then kissed Shilpa Shetty on the cheek. A local citizen took offence and filed a PIL in court and said that the public display of affection offended local sensibilities and it was “highly sexually erotic.” Wow, this guy has clearly never been to Khajurao. A court then issued a warrant for Gere and Shetty’s arrest saying they “transgressed all limits of vulgarity and have the tendency to corrupt the society”. A court later suspended the warrant but we think it will be a few more years before Gere makes a high-profile appearance in India again.

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